Monday, 5 January 2009

Movie night at last

The relentless pace of TV having dried up somewhat over Christmas we found ourselves we no back-log of unwatched viewing and therefore the opportunity to watch some movies.

First up was 'Journey to Middle Earth'. What a truly terrible movie. It is very rare that a film has absolutely no redeeming features, but this was one of those occasions. The 'V' after the title when you look it up on IMDB reveals that it is a straight to video release. Neither Rich nor I could remember adding it to our list, we eventually concluded it must have got added by accident instead of Brendan Fraser's 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' (which is happily coming for this weekend). So the sneaky movie people got their wish - it can be no coincidence that this appeared at exactly the same time as the other similarly titled (and hopefully) much better film.

Where to start with what was wrong. The terrible CGI dinosaurs (yes, dinosaurs, don't get me started). The mysterious (and never explained) natural lighting however many thousand kilometres down. The inexplicably entirely female squadron of soldiers. The fact that the soldiers couldn't be less soldier like (they run around in vest tops with their hair lose and pretty perfect make-up). The entirely rubbish shots in the 'Deep Digger' craft. The universally attrocious acting or the fact that before the end credits they had the absolute cheek to state "based on the book by Jules Verne". More like based on the crib notes of somebody who never read the book and fell asleep in the 1960s movie. I will save you time. Do not watch this movie, it gets a zero star rating from me.

After this we had 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall'. I approached this with some trepidation as I am not a Russell Brand fan (in fact, I'm whatever the opposite of a fan is). He did well though. Pretty much playing himself - but that was what the part called for. Do watch this movie... although probably not if you are easily offended as the language is blue and the sex is gratutious. The music was written and performed by the main actor. It was generally well acted, and the music was superb - Rich and I agreed that we would like to go and see Peter's puppet-vampire musical... and Rich doesn't much like musicals and I don't much like puppets. I give this one six out of ten.